4/27/2012 with updates:
Like it or not, most UO faculty are now in a union. This union will need to negotiate a Collective Bargaining Agreement with our administrative overlords UO/OUS management and put it to a vote. The comments are open for suggested CBA clauses. No non-CBA comments on this thread, please!
As a starting point, the PSU union CBA is here. The UO Matters union Meta-FAQ with other links is here. And here’s a recent AAUP/UConn agreement. Read the whole thing, to me this could be interpreted as a cap on merit raises:
Some interesting quotes from PSU CBA:
“The Fair Share amount shall be an amount equivalent to the dues collected for membership in the PSU-AAUP.”
” up to six (6) course releases shall be available to Association members per academic year.”
“the University agrees to establish a career support fund in the amount of $50,000 per year during the term of this Agreement for the purpose of supporting development plans consistent with this Article.”
Of course the salary section (Article 30) is of particular interest. As expected, nearly all of the text is devoted to pumping up the salary floor. I expect this is going to have a significant effect on the cost of doing science at the UO. Those of us with grants are likely in for a wild ride.
I’ve been looking more at Florida’s CBA, since UF is an AAU institution (and became one well after unionizing). There’s lots that’s reassuring for union opponents (and I am one). For instance, departments are given explicit roles in articulating discipline-specific P&T standards even if administrators & trustees still get to make the final call. There’s also little evidence of regimentation when it comes to salaries, working hours and conditions, and length of employment. People paid on soft money don’t get extra job security, for example.
Taken as a whole, the CBA probably does codify some things that in a well-run administration don’t need codifying. But we can’t always count on having a well-run administration.
http://www.uffacultycontract.org/new/archive/2010-2013_UFF-UFBOT_PROPOSED_CBA.pdf
Thanks – that’s very useful.
Yes, we are now set with the task of codifying workplace conditions that the UO admin has failed to do for a very long time. Comparing the CBA’s and then identifying some good foundations will be a challenging task for union organizers who will then need to put a package(s) before the faculty. It is nice to see this kind resourcefulness on uomatters. Thanks Anon 3:31.
Should the union’s Organizing Committee be soliciting the faculty’s ideas on CBA and bylaws? Where are they anyway?
The answer to where the organizing committee is: having meetings with departments and others to find out what they want. So contact a union friendly person or go to the website and make contact and be part of it all–instead of spreading rumor, innuendo, doubt, and the like.
For every instance of rumor and innuendo on this blog, there are about three instances of good information and good questions. As for doubt: in an academic setting, doubt is good. As for going to the website to become part of it all, who receives emails posted to [email protected] — currently the only way one can to contact the UAUO as such?
Try as we might, every positive becomes a negative. I am sure that you know people involved with the union. Contact one of them or one of the members of the organizing committee ( all known, all with office phone #s, e-mail accounts and the like) and then get involved or ask questions etc. Yes, doubt is good, but be honest–you have to admit that one of the memes of this campaign has been: “union people are mediocre, want mediocrity, are dishonest, politically out on the margins etc.” Do you expect to insult me and other colleagues and then have us come begging to you to take power once we have done the work. The assumed sense of superiority on the part of the antis is off the charts.
You can now use your union power to try and show us “antis” a thing or two. Apparently you’re eager to put us in our place. Good luck with that.
Not at all. I am just tired of all the insulting way that you have conducted yourself. I have no desire to put anyone in their “place,” and no desire to even contemplate what that place would or should be. I would actually just like to see the union work now that it is a fact, and have been rather put off by how the false reports keep being shot off even after the race is run.
I’d appreciate it if you’d both stop arguing, read some CBA’s, and post something about what clauses would be good for UO and which not. Thanks.
I’d be interested in how the CBA might deal with post-docs. Post-docs are funded either by fellowships, usually under the mentorship of a lab PI, or from the lab PIs grants. One glaring problem is that lab-funded post-docs can’t get raises, even though raises are budgeted into lab grants. I imagine that now the salaries will be determined by the CBA, with some ability for raises?
Part of the job insecurity of a post-doc is that if they don’t have their own fellowship money, there is a determination by the lab PI if there are sufficient funds for continued employment. This decision can come swiftly, for instance if a grant is unexpectedly not funded. Will a CBA give post-docs more job security? How might that be accomplished? If a post-doc cannot be removed from a lab quickly, then other lab members would have to be fired, but graduate students in a lab do have some assurances of completing their degree if progressing in a timely manner. Will the union provide support to the post-doc while a more deliberate process takes place?
The Rutgers CBA for post-docs keeps it pretty simple. 2% raises unless the funding source offers higher raises. 30 days termination notice.
Postdoc raises aren’t budgeted into all lab grants. Modular NIH grants don’t include them, as one very important example.
The bigger question for postdocs is OPE. Postdocs are ridiculously expensive here because they are paid like normal employees, even though their position is temporary by nature. Thus, significant grant funds are siphoned off into retirement accounts that never vest. I was under the impression that the university was close to having a solution to this problem, like most other research universities, but this will likely have to be worked through the union now. Hopefully the union will also realize the importance of correcting this problem.
Dog says
yes this is a problem. Last year Oregon State did manage to do something positive
where PostDocs are now budgeted as temporary employees with respect to
benefits.
It seems unlikely that the Union’s highest priority will be to find ways to reduce benefits to its members!
Even if it’s for the overall good of the university?
Oh I see, anon 12:33–I guess it’s not everyone’s union, after all? (to quote you: “Do you expect to insult me and other colleagues and then have us come begging to you to take power once we have done the work.”) WOW.
I agree with the last remark. {Anon April 29 12:33] I am only at the U of O half time, so have not been involved with the unionization efforts – though I am eligible to be in it, and am a strong union supporter. The rest of the time I am at Oxford University, where the response from my colleagues to news of our unionization has been 100% positive. My sense is that the opponents of the union did nothing to oppose it; now they are presenting themselves as the champions of “excellence”. Dream on. Oxford faculty are not unionized for the simple reason that they already have what unionization brings–mainly faculty empowerment. Faculty make ALL the decisions here; every administrator, except the chancellor, works for the faculty and is subject to immediate recall. I have not seen a decline of standards. When your program makes a decision here, you don’t have to listen to some idiot vice-provost’s opinions as to its wisdom. Administrators actually return your emails, because they know they work for you, and not the other way around. One of the reasons I left the U of O Philosophy Department is that I got sick of dealing with CAS “deans” that knew nothing about philosophy. Sure, faculty can screw things up. But WE are the faculty: our fate is in our hands.
Touting unionization by highlighting the merits of an non-unionized campus? Interesting.
Dear Cheyney Ryan: while we’ve got you on the phone, what’s your reaction to the argument that “The British universities, Oxford and Cambridge included, are under siege from a system of state control that is undermining the one thing upon which their worldwide reputation depends: the caliber of their scholarship” even while the “Oxford and Cambridge dons, and the British academy in general, have never taken a clear stand against [this].” At issue is the insinuation of bureaucratic “Research Assessment Exercises” in place of traditional peer review and faculty governance.
This is a sincere question — no sarcasm intended — though I did cherry-pick the quotations to be provocative.
Full article at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jan/13/grim-threat-british-universities/
Here is an interesting clause from Delaware:
” Each hour spent in scheduled classroom teaching counts as 1 credit‑contact hour. Each hour spent in scheduled laboratory, field, studio, clinical or applied music instruction and individual instruction counts as 1/2 credit‑contact hour. Scheduled individual special problems and theses count as 1 credit‑contact hour, and dissertations count as 2 credit contact hours. For individual instruction, individual special problems, theses and dissertations, the faculty receive credit only in the semester that the student completes the project or special problem, and defends his/her thesis or dissertation. Thirty full‑time undergraduate advisees are equivalent to 1/2 credit‑contact hour. Credit for undergraduate advisees is given in blocks of 30 students and may not be prorated. Each hour spent in assigned scheduled individual laboratory, field, studio, clinical or applied music instruction which requires the constant attendance of the faculty member for the entire scheduled hours of instruction, and which does not involve the participation of teaching assistants, counts as one teaching contact hour per week. “
This seems a bit micromanaging. Wouldn’t the effort teaching a lab or class vary widely? Supervising a graduate student’s dissertation may be a huge effort (equal to teaching a seminar class) in some departments, and mean a discussion every few weeks in others.
Dog agrees
Yes the UDel excerpt highlights one of my concerns is that “faculty union time” will
be unnecessarily micro managed even to the point of how many minutes we have
for lunch.
To UOMatters:
Agreed that there will be some kind of cap in order to facilitate salary redistribution to floors.